


reunions (and an orange painted sky)

by skuls



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Post-Episode: s10e06 My Struggle II, The X-Files Revival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-05-31
Packaged: 2018-07-11 11:16:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7047433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skuls/pseuds/skuls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mulder grins wider in response, tightening his arms around her. “Scully, I think there’s someone you should meet.”</p><p>(A series of connected tumblr prompts)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This first one was originally posted to "one in five billion". however, since i called scully mulder's fiance in the other two stories, i thought it fit in nicely. this one takes place post babylon, but i also didn't want to associate with the shit that was babylon. 
> 
> "You’re beautiful, you know that?” and "Are you ever going to ask the question you came to ask me?"

“You’re beautiful, you know that?“ 

"Mulder, you’re drunk.” But she smiles, smile painted orange by the setting sun, and she swings their joined hands between them. 

“I’m not. And you are. You are beautiful.” He touches the tip of her nose on an impulse. 

She rolls her eyes a little, but she doesn’t stop smiling. He hasn’t seen her this happy since her mother. 

“So,” he starts. “Are you ever going to ask the question you came here to ask me?” It’s been several hours. She is good at procrastinating.

“What makes you think I came here with a question?” she teases. 

“I know you, Scully. You were driving with a purpose.”

“You’re just incredibly distracting,” she says. 

There is silence for a moment, the crickets serving as a background. He’s expecting a _do you want to give us another try, can I move back in_ , but definitely not a “will you marry me”. “Scully!” he says in surprise. 

“Mulder,” she prompts him. “You asked. Eighteen years ago. Would you have preferred I brought a ring?” Her free hand slips into her pocket.

“No! I-I just… you surprised me.” He can still remember the day she left, bags on the porch. He’d asked her not to. 

She seems to deflate a little. “You don’t have to say yes,” she says. “It seems a little… unconventional in our situation.” She pulls her hand out of his.

“No, wait, Scully, wait.” He grabs it again. 

She turns her eyes up to meet his, burning blue eyes in the night. “You’re… all I have left now, Mulder.” Names are left unsaid between them, but they all register in his brain, like a knife. “I think my leaving was for the best, but I’m ready to come back. You’re my family, Mulder.”

He squeezes her hand tightly.

“But we don’t have to get married to make that official,” she adds. “It was just a thought.”

He kisses her, any echoes of trumpets flying free of his brain. “Of course,” he says. “Of course I’ll marry you.”

She smiles quickly and widely, ducking her head, and slips something over his finger. “So you did get a ring,” he says teasingly.

“It was my father’s,” she says. “Bill gave it to me after the funeral.”

He pulls her against him, heart swelling up. “I’ll get you one,” he promises. 

He strokes her hair a little as the last of daylight fades away. He could spend time musing on decades wasted, but there are decades to come. And it seems to him that Scully will be a part of them.

“Oh, yeah,” she says lazily, happily. “I guess I am gonna be Mrs. Spooky now.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’re hurt.”

When she’d first been taken, he’d found her buried in tubes on a hospital bed. When he’d been taken, she’d found him dead in a field. The repercussions seem to get worse with every abduction, and he doesn’t even want to think about where he’ll find her now. He survived the fucking apocalypse, for god’s sake, but she might be dead, and he might never know, oh the irony.

He finds her in the backyard. The dog barks wildly and paws the window wildly, claws screeching against the glass. He gasps on the first syllable of her name before tearing out of the back door and into the yard. 

She lies crumpled in the grass, hair spread out around her face like a fan, eyes closed. It is early, sun streaking the sky colors reminiscent of blood. He fumbles for her pulse point, and trembles with relief when he finds one. “Scully?” he whispers, going down on his knees beside her and pulling her into his lap.

She lets out a whoosh of breath as her eyes flutter open. “Mulder?” she whispers groggily.

There is a crudely bandaged gash along her forehead, along with the bruises along her arms. “You’re hurt,” he says.

“Mulder, what happened? The bridge… you were dying.”

“I’m fine, Scully,” he promises, almost laughing with relief. She is here and alive in his arms. “Someone managed to save me.”

Scully’s eyes widen in realization. “The ship.”

He’d been unable to move, to do anything. He couldn’t even scream when it happened. He’d been too weak. He kisses her forehead as he hugs her closer.

“Mulder.” She sits halfway up, leaning her head against his shoulder. “You’re really okay?”

“Yes,” he promises her with a smile. “I’m fine. I swear.” He should get her to a doctor. Maybe he should call Einstein, she probably wouldn’t object to an abrupt house call.

“But… how?” Her forehead is scrunched up as she tries to figure it out. “I thought that… it could’ve only been me, or…” Recognition dawns on Scully’s face, and she stares up at him in amazement.

Mulder grins wider in response, tightening his arms around her. “Scully, I think there’s someone you should meet.”


	3. Chapter 3

His parents drop him off in front of the house, and the car idles for a minute before William gets out and scales the stairs to the porch with his overnight bag bouncing between his shoulders. They’ve done this enough times for it to be routine, and Mulder waves at the Van de Kamps from the doorway. 

“Hey,” his son says as he reaches the door. Behind him, Daggoo lunges at the screen door, barking wildly. “Hey, buddy!” William addresses the dog, tapping his fingers against the screen door. Daggoo snaps the air in front of the door playfully, cocks his head, and runs off towards the living room where Scully is lying on the couch; he has been sticking to his old mistress like glue ever since she re-showed. William looks up at Mulder, his eyebrow raising. “She’s here, isn’t she,” he says quietly. “My birth mother.” 

He’s not surprised by this turn of events. It hasn’t taken long for him to figure out that William is… perceptive. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “She was returned.”

William nods, overlong hair brushing the back of his collar, and offers a small smile. “It’ll be nice to meet her.”

Along with Daggoo, Mulder had taken several things from Scully’s house - pictures, some small mementos that had survived years on the run. William had asked why he’d been given up for adoption, and Mulder hadn’t had much to tell him. He’d never felt like much of a father after what happened, but at least he hadn’t had to make that choice, to hand their son over to strangers. And the last thing he’d wanted was for William to think badly of Scully, even if he never got the chance to meet her. (Because he’d been preparing himself for that, the chance that she’d never come back…)

“Do you want to come on in?”

William shoves the door open with one hand, and swings his overnight bag down into the other. He turns towards the living room, and freezes. Scully is sitting under a blanket on the couch, Daggoo burrowed into her side, both hands over her mouth. Mulder presses a hand to William’s shoulder and nudges him gently towards the couch. “William,” he says softly. “This is Dana Scully.” _Your mother,_ he adds silently, but he can’t say that, in the same way that he can’t call himself William’s father, because his parents, the ones who raised him, are driving away from his house, and he hates it, really, but this is how these things go.

William extends a hand. “It’s nice to me- see you again.”

Scully nods slowly, taking her hands down and blinking back tears. She takes William’s hand and shakes it. “It’s good to see you,” she says breathlessly. “Look at you - you’ve gotten so tall.”

Mulder looks between his son and his fiance, a child and his mother, fingers laced together as they shake hands. He’s tempted to slip in an FBI’s most unwanted joke, but William wouldn’t get it, and there’s enough left unsaid between them. 

“Are you okay?” William asks, eyes shifting up to the wound on Scully’s forehead. Mulder had clumsily re-bandaged it himself, going by her shaky-voiced instructions as she smiled weakly. He reaches out absently, and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. 

“Wha- oh, yes, I’m fine,” she says, brushing her fingers against the wound. “Uh - thank you.” There’s a stinted silence, and Mulder really just wants to wipe everything clean, rewrite them a new history. Like life is a whiteboard. 

Daggoo sticks his head out and licks William’s fingers happily. “Scully lover,” Mulder mutters before catching himself.

But Scully laughs, and William smirks, and some tension lifts between them. 

* * *

They eat with the couch serving as a dining room table. Scully asks William questions, lots of questions, about his life, what he  enjoys, the same kinds of things Mulder asked when he first met. William doesn’t get angry; he’d only gotten angry once, in a hospital, and only for a few minutes. And then he’d sunk into a hard chair beside Mulder’s bed. “I always wanted to know about my birth parents,” he’d said, fingers fanned out over his closed eyes. “I just… never thought I’d be saving them.” Mulder hadn’t expected to see William after the hospital (he’d gone home in a lonely fog, without  Scully, losing his son again), but he’d called him a few days later. His parents had moved him down to the area a few years ago, he’d said, and he’d like to see Mulder again if that was okay. It had started with an awkward dinner with William’s parents. Then it turned to Mulder and William going out by themselves, to William visiting the house, to him staying the night. Things had gotten positive, and Mulder had tried to make the room William slept in more welcoming. He thought that maybe he could do it, live without Scully, see William as much as possible. He couldn’t imagine it getting better.

William gets tired around ten-thirty, yawning widely. He heads off to shower, and Mulder helps Scully up the stairs at her request. She shrugs on one of his shirts and buries herself in his arms. “Thanks,” she says quietly. “Thanks for this.”

“Mulder?”

They turn to face their son, Scully balanced on Mulder’s arm. “Hey, Will,” he says. “You headed to bed?”

“Uhh, yeah.” He gestures past them at Daggoo, who is curled up on the bed. “I guess he’s sleeping with you guys tonight.”

“You can take him if you want,” Scully says. “I have Mulder.”

He laughs uncertainly. They’re both uncertain, like a child on new legs.

“Tonight was nice,” William says. “I’m really glad I got to see you guys again.”

When Scully speaks, she is choked up. “Me, too.” Mulder wraps an arm around her shoulders, a smile pulling at his lips. He doesn’t remember the last time he was this happy.

William steps forward, stops. “Would it be okay to, uh, hug you?”

Scully nods, steps forward and wraps her arms around her son’s shoulders. He hugs her back tentatively, still unsure but they are getting there. Mulder envelops the both of them in a hug, resting his cheek against Scully’s hair. Even though he knows it will inevitably end (he’s not theirs to keep and he never will be), in the moment, it’s nice to imagine it won't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this story was partially based off of my suspicions for season 11, but mostly is headcanons of what i wish would happen. also, i love writing teenage william.


End file.
